Free WiFI at Panera Bread on Amherst St, Nashua

[Derek Martin]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 06:36:39AM -0400, Travis Roy wrote:
> What do you expect? Would you rather they get a ton of information
> and then force you to login every time? They need to cover their ass
> in some way. What if you go on and start sending out viruses or
> spam. I think one of the biggest threats to a lot of these free
> hotspots in small businesses is the lack of accountability. If you
> have a coffee shop and and a open wireless network and some schmoe
> comes by and start playing hack the planet the poor coffee shop
> owner is ultimately responsible. It is their internet connection
> after all.

I think this is highly unlikely.  It's hard enough to convict people
when you can trace them and prove it was them.  An Internet cafe is
not the same as an ISP, but they're similarly not responsible for the
actions of their users -- they're essentially providing the same
function.  In fact, I'd bet a clever lawyer could succesfully argue
that they should be protected by the same body of law.

I'd be very surprised if there were an established body of law under
which the cafe could be held liable.

> All it takes is one moron sitting outside in his car that ends up
> getting some coffee shop sued because they're liable due to their
> totally open and advertised hotspot to start people closing them all
> down.

More likely their ISP would just cut them off, if anything.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
-=-=-=-=-
This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result in
undeliverable mail.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  Thank the spammers.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20040826/9c776bad/attachment.bin